Meredith Stout of Oakland prepares to put a rack of corn into the 30" Wall Oven. Home appliance company Miele held a demo for prospective buyers at their showroom in San Francisco, CA August 11th, 2012

I'd never thought of my risotto in biblical terms. "It's like Moses parting the Red Sea," cooking coach Kathryn Regalia says. "When you drag your spatula through the middle, and it stays apart, it's time to add more stock." With Regalia's guidance, I'm cooking one of my go-to dishes, Donna Hay's Lemon Parmesan Risotto, on a gas Viking range top at the American kitchen appliance maker's showroom in Hayward.

In the Bay Area, it's become common to try high-end kitchen appliances before you buy, assessing how a familiar recipe comes out on unfamiliar equipment or taking a hands-on class. At the demonstration kitchens in manufacturers' showrooms and at appliance dealers, consumers can see what it's like to cook on many top brands before purchasing, test-driving the latest offerings from the likes of Blue Star, Gaggenau, Miele, Viking and Wolf. Outfitting a kitchen with these appliances doesn't come cheap: You can expect to pay up to $8,000 for one full-service range, or for an in-counter cooktop and a wall oven - the combination many of them recommend.

My wish is certainly this sensitive Viking cooktop's command - the risotto is bubbling too much, so I turn down the flame on the front burner (with its 15,000 BTUs) and, presto, just the right amount of bubble; the chicken stock gives off wisps of steam from the burner behind. "It's got a great simmer, right?" Regalia, the showroom's culinary director and product specialist, says. I don't tell her, but it's certainly a better simmer than I have on my entry-level gas stove at home. My stove's burners seem to know only two modes: boil over the moment you turn your back and is it even on?

"The try-before-you-buy, test-driving trend began about a decade ago," says Jill Notini, a vice president of the Washington-based Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. She remembers attending the grand opening of a Whirlpool facility outside Atlanta with a consumer-accessible demonstration kitchen, shortly after the turn of the millennium. "But then, in the teeth of the Great Recession, it largely went away, and that Whirlpool facility refocused on training dealers not customers. Offering consumer tryouts is expensive to do, of course, but it seems to be creeping back in, at least for high-end products in certain areas."

She attributes the increased availability of test-driving programs to various factors, most intuitive, but some not: "Obviously, these appliances are a big investment, but it's more than that - purchasing an appliance is more emotional than you might expect. People want their appliances not only to be time savers, but they also want them to be eye-catching and to represent their style and aspirations. Although people do a lot of online research these days, they still want to see, touch and feel - and sometimes use - the appliance before they bring it home."

The demos generally do more than give clients a chance to experience the look, feel and operation of the latest generation of conventional stoves and ovens - they try to turn attendees on to new kitchen technologies. According to Larissa Taboryski, the frequent demonstrations of German appliance maker Gaggenau's products that she runs aim to help clients decide whether to opt for cutting-edge ovens and cooktops instead of, or in addition to, more traditional ones.

"The steam ovens and induction cooktops are relatively new, at least to North American consumers, and they can dramatically change the way you cook," says the culinary director at the Brisbane appliance dealer Purcell Murray. "It's probably not an exaggeration to say there's been a technological revolution in the kitchen recently. Our clients, when they're redoing their kitchens, are choosing whether to jump on board - and, before doing that, they understandably want to see these tools in action."

She says the steam ovens are so new to the market, and vary so much from brand to brand, that there are few recipes tailored specifically for them - although everyone agrees on how well they resuscitate leftovers. "We've been experimenting ourselves, learning as we go along." To flavor the salmon fillets she prepares during the session I attend, she's learned to put lemon juice in the steam oven's water reservoir. The Gaggenau steam ovens also function as convection ovens, and the humidity and heat can both be set independently. "So for a chicken, at first, you often do low humidity, high heat to crisp the skin, and then bump up the humidity and lower the heat, to cook it through, and keep it moist."

Many of the details that are usually learned only after purchase - what is simple, what is complex, which appliances are easy to clean, which devilishly hard - are quite evident during a session. She points out how the steam oven has a fan to keep heat and condensation away from anyone opening the oven - especially helpful for ensuring the bespectacled cook's glasses don't steam up. The patented blue interior of the ovens allegedly make it easier to determine a chicken's real color through the glass, which (together with a high-tech meat thermometer) obviates the need for frequent oven opening. The line's design is Apple clean, with few buttons and dials, but computer-challenged would-be clients will realize during the session - and before committing - that they have a moderate learning curve before them to master the controls. "The results," Taboryski enthuses over the eight-dish lunch she's whipped up, with seemingly little effort. "The results make it worth it."

Robbin Mashbein says she came to a recent class when she was redoing the "ancient" kitchen and appliances in her Buena Vista Heights home. "I literally had one burner still working on my stove." Because her space was small, she opted for a compact induction cooktop, a cooking method that transfers heat to special pots using magnetic forces ("It was as quick as gas, but took some learning") and a conventional oven ("It did the Rosh Hashanah brisket just fine - it made me look like a better cook than I am.)"

At the SoMa showroom of Miele, the German archrival of Gaggenau, Chris Krotke, a Cordon Bleu-trained chef, leads weekly demos. "Sometimes people come before purchasing, sometimes after, to deepen their knowledge of what these things can do."

On the day I attend, most are in the latter camp, recent purchasers who want to harness their machines' full potential. There's a couple from Orinda who have a "speed oven" - a combination microwave and convection oven - and one from Livermore with one of Miele's three-tiered dishwashers and a double wall oven. "We keep the door open after the purchase," Krotke says, "and the calls I get before Thanksgiving."

Again, there's knowledge to be gleaned from watching the machines in action that can't be found online or in a casual showroom tour. A class participant accidentally turns off the induction stove top by passing a hand over its sensitive, light-triggered on-off button. "That took me some getting used to," Krotke admits. You notice how efficiently heat is directed to the pan with induction, how quick water is to boil on it, then how suddenly it can go down to a simmer. With a touch of showmanship, Krotke puts a paper towel under the specially designed induction pans during cooking to demonstrate how different this use of magnetism to heat is from normal electric or gas cooking. Throughout the class, a pot of chocolate slyly simmers on an induction element, never burning, always just right for its eventual purpose: enrobing strawberries. Another great simmer, an enviable simmer.

It's probably inevitable that the next risotto I cook on our basic, perfectly decent, too-new-to-replace Kenmore comes out almost inedible. Honestly, the burn on the bottom, the way the stock boiled over, these came about through inattention, but I, of course, blame the poor stove. If I only had a better simmer. This, of course, is part of the point of these hands-on sessions: They make you covet the best, no matter the price tag.

Test-driving programs

These Bay Area outlets have either hands-on classes or take appointments from serious prospective purchasers to cook in their show kitchens. Do people try out their fanciest, dinner-party dishes? "Not usually," Viking's Kathryn Regalia says, "It's almost always rice. Most often, people want to see if their special way of preparing it will work."

BSC Culinary

The goods: Blue Star

These chunky, powerful ranges and ovens are made in America by a company with roots going back to 1880. Traditionally, Blue Star manufactured mainly for the restaurant trade, but in 2002 its designers began to adapt some products for residential use.

Purcell Murray

The goods: Gaggenau

The German manufacturer (founded in 1683) offers sleek, generally compact conventional ovens and cook-tops as well as more cutting-edge products - a combined steam and convection oven (the "Combi") and an induction cooktop that has no set burners, but cooks based on wherever on the surface you happen to set the pot.

Miele Gallery at Sierra Select Distributors

The goods: Miele

Another German appliance maker (founded only in 1899) shows off its entire line of high-design, high-tech kitchen products in its San Francisco showroom, from coffee-makers to fridges, from warming drawers to induction and gas cook-tops to all manner of oven (convection, steam, microwave, conventional).

GSC Viking Experience

The goods: Viking

The pride of Greenwood, Miss., since 1987, Viking has a showroom at Hayward's GSC that includes a working kitchen and 19 different staged kitchen vignettes - a font of ideas for would-be kitchen renovators. The "Mid-Life Crisis" has all the trappings of a stereotypical bachelor's pad kitchen, from sports-car-red appliances to an outsized freezer; the appliances in "Andalusia" come in an eye-popping cobalt blue - a kitchen made even more vivid by its orange accents.

Riggs Distributing

The goods: Wolf

The high-end stove-maker, which started operation out of Los Angeles in 1934, has been owned since 2000 by American fridge-manufacturer Sub-Zero. Its signature dual-fuel range (gas stove-top, electric oven) is among the appliances demonstrated in regular local classes.